Beasts and Super-Beasts eBook

THE TREASURE SHIP

The great galleon lay in semi-retirement under the
sand and weed and water of the northern bay where
the fortune of war and weather had long ago ensconced
it. Three and a quarter centuries had passed
since the day when it had taken the high seas as an
important unit of a fighting squadron—­precisely
which squadron the learned were not agreed. The
galleon had brought nothing into the world, but it
had, according to tradition and report, taken much
out of it. But how much? There again the
learned were in disagreement. Some were as generous
in their estimate as an income-tax assessor, others
applied a species of higher criticism to the submerged
treasure chests, and debased their contents to the
currency of goblin gold. Of the former school
was Lulu, Duchess of Dulverton.

The Duchess was not only a believer in the existence
of a sunken treasure of alluring proportions; she
also believed that she knew of a method by which the
said treasure might be precisely located and cheaply
disembedded. An aunt on her mother’s side
of the family had been Maid of Honour at the Court
of Monaco, and had taken a respectful interest in the
deep-sea researches in which the Throne of that country,
impatient perhaps of its terrestrial restrictions,
was wont to immerse itself. It was through the
instrumentality of this relative that the Duchess learned
of an invention, perfected and very nearly patented
by a Monegaskan savant, by means of which the home-life
of the Mediterranean sardine might be studied at a
depth of many fathoms in a cold white light of more
than ball-room brilliancy. Implicated in this
invention (and, in the Duchess’s eyes, the most
attractive part of it) was an electric suction dredge,
specially designed for dragging to the surface such
objects of interest and value as might be found in
the more accessible levels of the ocean-bed.
The rights of the invention were to be acquired for
a matter of eighteen hundred francs, and the apparatus
for a few thousand more. The Duchess of Dulverton
was rich, as the world counted wealth; she nursed
the hope, of being one day rich at her own computation.
Companies had been formed and efforts had been made
again and again during the course of three centuries
to probe for the alleged treasures of the interesting
galleon; with the aid of this invention she considered
that she might go to work on the wreck privately and
independently. After all, one of her ancestors
on her mother’s side was descended from Medina
Sidonia, so she was of opinion that she had as much
right to the treasure as anyone. She acquired
the invention and bought the apparatus.